World of Warcraft would've been a first-person MMO in the EverQuest-inspired world of Overwatch's Jeff Kaplan: "I argued a lot for that"

If Jeff Kaplan had his wish, World of Warcraft would look quite different. During development of the MMORPG, he campaigned within Blizzard for the first-person perspective to be used, and he views his upcoming game The Legend of California as an indirect realization of those aspirations.

"I really wanted [World of Warcraft] to be first-person," he said during a livestream, as clipped by Majid Manzarpour on Twitter. "I argued a lot for that."

He believes "WoW is great" as it is in third-person, and there are "a lot of arguments about seeing your character more," but his playing history molded his preferences toward another direction. "I had come from EverQuest, they had this weird third-person camera that didn't really fully work that great, you didn't play with it on," he explains.

"[EverQuest] is all first-person," he states, before adding that The Legend of California is him indirectly coming back to the notion of a first-person fantasy sandbox. First-person was prevalent in role-playing games for years, as evidenced by The Elder Scrolls and Might and Magic series as well, before third-person became more fashionable.

Although the open-world shooter isn't heavy on the RPG elements, nor is The Legend of California very fantastical, you can see the elements strewn throughout. There's horseback riding through forest and mountains, and the guns give you long and short-range combat, and plenty of exploration. Most importantly, less of an emphasis on how your character specifically looks, which is a fundamental facet of playing a game with customizable equipment and such.

Kaplan showed the project off during the stream, which was a mammoth ten hour long session between him and Tim Ford. There's no release window for the game yet, but when it arrives, I wouldn't bother looking for the third-person toggle, because it likely won't be there.

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